Velocity Racing's 'Honey Badger' Blog

Reno-Fernley Raceway. Let’s see: porta-potties, wild horses (dodge the horse apples on the track), bunnies and tumbleweeds. Oh, ya, and a racetrack with a ton of corners, elevation changes, rough pavement that feels like your bike made love to a jackhammer and the first track where a fair number of my reference points ended up being tar snakes. I trailer pooled up with another one of my Curve Unit sisters, and we met up with our Prez in Sacramento and drove the rest of the way in a mini caravan. Around 7pm Friday night we rolled into RFR and I got my first glimpse of this rustic track. Dropped the trailers, and then got a pre-trackday Suburban tour of the track courtesy of Shawn and Kathy Reilly. My biggest impression? There’s a lot of freaking track to try to remember. After our little ride we headed into town for some (surprisingly rather good) all-you-can-eat sushi at Sushi Moto before heading to our hotel to crash for the night. Saturday dawned bright and early, if not ...

June 1st 2012 - my second Z2 Women's VIP day, and my second time up at Thunderhill this summer, and my second time out on the R6. 100 degree temperatures, a slight breeze and plenty of sun awaited me and the bike Friday morning. Heading out I had a couple things in mind I wanted to work on: for starters, basic steering and being careful not to sit there fighting myself on inputs; secondly, making sure my body position was consistent. First few sessions went well, finally got some feedback from a couple of the instructors on a few things to work on, including making sure my positioning-throttle roll off-braking-turn in sequence was correct and consistency between laps needing some work. Fixing my pre-corner order proved to be huge later that afternoon. Of course, it allowed the bike to be a lot more stable going into corners - which meant I could stay on the throttle longer, start braking later and go in just that touch bit faster. By the last few sessions I was seeing a huge ...